Carbon Dioxide Storage in East Coast U.S. Rocks

ScienceDaily (Jan. 5, 2010) — Scientists say buried volcanic rocks along the heavily populated coasts of New York, New Jersey and New England, as well as further south, might be ideal reservoirs to lock away carbon dioxide emitted by power plants and other industrial sources. A study this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences outlines formations on land as well as offshore, where scientists from Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory say the best potential sites may lie.

Underground burial, or sequestration, of globe-warming carbon dioxide is the subject of increasing study across the country. But up till now, research in New York has focused on inland sites where plants might send power-plant emissions into shale, a sedimentary rock that underlies much of the state. Similarly, a proposed coal-fired plant in Linden, N.J. would pump liquefied CO2 offshore into sedimentary sandstone. The idea is controversial because of fears that CO2 might leak. By contrast, the new study targets basalt, an igneous rock, which the scientists say has significant advantages.

Some basalt on land is already well known and highly visible. The vertical cliffs of the Palisades, along the west bank of the Hudson River near Manhattan, are pure basalt, and the rocks, formed some 200 million years ago, extend into the hills of central New Jersey. Similar masses are found in central Connecticut. Previous research by Lamont scientists and others shows that carbon dioxide injected into basalt undergoes natural chemical reactions that will eventually turn it into a solid mineral resembling limestone. If the process were made to work on a large scale, this would help obviate the danger of leaks.

The study’s authors, led by geophysicist David S. Goldberg, used existing research to outline more possible basalt underwater, including four areas of more than 1,000 square kilometers each, off northern New Jersey, Long Island and Massachusetts. A smaller patch appears to lie more or less under the beach of New Jersey’s Sandy Hook, peninsula, opposite New York’s harbor and not far from the proposed plant in Linden. The undersea formations are inferred from seismic and gravity measurements. “We would need to drill them to see where we’re at,” said Goldberg. “But we could potentially do deep burial here. The coast makes sense. That’s where people are. That’s where power plants are needed. And by going offshore, you can reduce risks.” Goldberg and his colleagues previously identified similar formations off the U.S. Northwest.

165 thoughts on “Carbon Dioxide Storage in East Coast U.S. Rocks”

I just can’t imagine the people living in the heavily populated area of New Jersey, Connecticut, and New York agreeing to the pipelines and the sequestration around them. They don’t even dispose of their own garbage–they ship it out to central Pennsylvania.

Why bother?
If carbon dioxide can be captured at all, why pump it underground when it can be piped into greenhouses to be taken up by photosynthetic plants, simultaneously sequestering this “toxic” gas and producing yields of botanical products?
I suggest Cannabis sativa grown densely in such greenhouses, with strains selected for the production of fiber, seed, seed oil, and pulp (as opposed to tetrahydrocannabinol), providing America with an enormously valuable cash crop that has a number of key benefits including lower cost and lower environmental impact in processing compared against pulpwood, cotton, and synthetic fibers.
With enhanced CO2 availability, the yields produced by such crops would be extremely high, immediately advantageous, and a great employment generator. Real, sustained “green” jobs.
As if human-induced emissions of carbon dioxide has ever (or could possibly ever) cause “global warming” in any way whatsoever, meaning that any CO2 sequestration is totally friggin’ useless to begin with.

Wonderful. I hope whoever figured out that there won’t be any significant risk of massively fatal CO2 plumes in the far future are not the same people behind the CO2 will kill us all if left above-ground foolishness. Not in my back yard comes to mind…

The only ‘carbon capture’ that makes any sense is to use the hot damp CO2 rich gases in long rows of commercial green-houses growing a cash crop like bananas or pomegranates. Thus ‘carbon capture’ would lose no power and could even subsidize power production. The Dutch grow tomatoes this way I’m told.

They get billions for CO2 storage without a shred of evidence aside from a couple of computer models that have not matched observations that says CO2 is harmful in any way.
It is a fairly nonsensical waste of money in hard economic times. I bet we could get better value by convincing that simply burning cash in a power plant would produce carbon neutral power.

Researchers like David S. Goldberg are monsters IMHO; willing to explore some of the most dangerous activities — drilling holes to stuff in CO2 — when we have no firm proof that CO2 levels today or in the medium-term are of any danger to anyone. I imagine his (and co-authors) research grants are dripping with “leftist” money — especially Columbia, that claims Obama as graduate (without any proof or anyone stating they knew him). But guess what, a little shimmy on the part of Mother Earth with a consequent large belch of CO2 could asphyxiate living beings and seriously damage the environment.
Until the danger of CO2 is proven beyond a doubt — and the physics is noncontroversial and cannot be falsified — a criminal indictment should be in the offing for anyone who tries to drill CO2 into Mother Earth.

Great, the real threat is a cold trend, short growing seasons, famine in the poorer countries and these guys want to bury plant food.
I beginning to understand how the last time the sun went passive and the crops failed, people began to burn witches. I have a couple scapegoats in mind. How are we going to find the wood for the fire under all this snow?

This will of course promptly be stopped once it is “discovered” by environmentalists that the CO2 will seep into underground caverns and kill off the rare blind six-toed cave newts.
How is the work going on using CO2 for algae farms, combining both solar power and fuel burning? I’ve seen initial stuff where the algae is harvested for… Animal feed, whatever it’s good for. Some reports suggest, perhaps with genetic engineering, we can grow algae that can be processed into bio-fuel.
Hey, now there’s an idea. Use the CO2 to grow algae with sunlight, then burn the algae at a second plant. In the carbon credit schemes, the fossil fuel plant can save credits by not releasing CO2, and because the algae plant is “bio-fueled,” thus using green “renewable” energy, it can vent CO2 right into the atmosphere as it is “carbon neutral” and not use its credits at all! The utility can get paid twice for the same “carbon savings” while still releasing the CO2 it was planning to vent anyway!
Anyone here more familiar with the carbon offset and credit rackets who thinks that wouldn’t work?

I believe that the green extremists are as hostile to Carbon Sequestration as they are to Nuclear Power, and for the same reason. It undermines their arguments for making the rest of us wear the “hair shirt” of massive government control.

This illustrates the fallacy of the old precautionary argument, “It doesn’t really matter whether the science is right because it’s beneficial to reduce our carbon footprint regardless of global warming.” If there is no problematic anthropogenic global warming, there is no justification for carbon sequestration schemes. If there is only a small amount of problematic anthropogenic global warming, carbon sequestration is still probably not cost-effective.
In actual fact, we have absolutely no idea what is cost effective to take care of a problem that we don’t know exists.

Absolute NONSENSE!
What a scandalous, ludicrous, borderline criminal WASTE of the taxpayer money.
We have reached a day where it could be argued that this feverish demonization of CO2…is indication of massive delusion / groupthink phenomenon….not seen in the intelligentsia of our species, on such a large scale basis, for more than half a century.
I think increasing CO2 must be causing mass brain damage.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Nobody mentioned earthquakes by now? Here in Northern Germany – we have no earthquakes at all while the southwest of Germany does have minor ones – there are experiments going on with air pressure storage in an old emptied mine or gas field. The problem is, when you change the pressure up and down this might lead to cave ins and thus earthquakes. There was already one such incident probably caused by this experiment. No damage occured but you know… None of the buildings here are prepared for even minor earthquakes. Good Luck!
BTW the air pressure storage is of course needed as fast temporary buffer for wind power spikes.

As stated above, is there ANY sense of caution or even “judgment” in this (well-funded!!!) study that says, “We are not sure if carbon sequestration is a good thing and worth spending any money doing?”
But, you see, people are starving to death in Africa and dying from lack of medical care in the Pacific so we must drill (very expensive) wells in North America to bury a harmless under reat pressure and temperatures underground.
Wasting additional time, money, steel, water, energy, and resources on ….nothing.

As a mining engineer, the thought of injecting rock with CO2 to keep it from destroying the earth is nuts. I know there are plenty of people out there that think Greenland is going to capsize and dump it’s entire boatload of ice into the ocean, or that polar bears are going to invade Central Park and eat the natives because there’s no ice plates upon which to eat the last remaining seals up north, but I have a better idea:
Why don’t we just take the CO2 they’re planning on sequestering, press it together really hard, make diamonds with the carbon and release the leftover oxygen for us all to get high on? So what if we destroy the world’s diamond cartel? At least we wouldn’t have to worry about any rock formation leaking that nasty stuff back into the atmosphere for the plants to use. (I do hope they come up with a plant erradication program so the rest of the flora on earth doesn’t suffocate from lack of that dreadful gas since its been turned to diamonds.) Of course, we’d have to balance that out eventually with a progrom that reduces overall fauna, too, just to keep the gasses balanced. The most likely species to erradicate would be homo sapiens, because they’re the ones who have been digging up all that coal and burning all that oil and THEY started this big mess in the first place. It’t not nice to unbalance Mother Nature.
Maybe I’ll check myself into some place for the unbalanced, too. After that, I’ll plant some palm trees and watch them grow.

Only a non carbon-based lifeform would want to rid the Earth of carbon.
Here’s your blockbuster sci-fi thriller title: Invasion of the Carbon Snatchers.
I know there are folks out there who are truly tired of living, but why must all Life on Earth perish to satisfy their thirst for extinction?

NIMBY.
The EPA have declared CO2 to be a dangerous poisonous gas – the stuff could leak, then what happens???
Not a single cent should be spent on this ridiculous proposal to store dangerous gases in or anywhere near urban centres…
Also, not a single cent should be spent to store this dangerous gas away from urban centres, it could disturb the pristine, natural environment.
That’s it – not a single cent should be spent.

Why don’t we simply pump all CO2 into the deep ocean where it will form clathrates? As the AGW scientists always point out, water exchange between upper and lower ocean is purportedly slow, why not just move it directly into the deep ocean?

It may be that there is a natural process that follows the above chemistry. I live on a basalt flow, near Basalt Mtn. in Colorado. I have very rich soil, filled with basalt from fist to boulder (car) size. All the basalt I dig up has at least a partial coating of white carbonate, I assume from precipitating from the acidic soil, lots of scrub oak, juniper and pinion. This coating can be a half inch or more thickness, and would represent a lot of CO2. Just another possibility of where some of the stuff goes.

Since power plants do not emit pure CO2, one has to separate it from the rest. On a chemical engineering viewpoint, separation of a mixture requires a huge amount of energy (= CO2 emission). The next stage, probably the liquefaction of purified CO2 followed by its pumping into the underground cave, also requires a healthy amount of energy (= CO2 emission). Have they carried out energy balance (= CO2 emission/removal balance) analysis correctly? It appears quite dubious to me……..

Just make the smoke stack tall enough to reach outer space. Let the vacuum pull the CO2 away.
transport CO2 to Mars… build a new home for progressives.
How much energy (CO2) will it take, to compress the CO2? I know air compressors suck lots of energy, just to compress to 100 PSI. How CO2 will be produced by the drilling process?
Why not plant…. plants, to suck in CO2 and use it to build plants. I know that process is rather new, but there must be someone with enough expertise, to make it work. Then the plants can be compressed into coal and burnt in power plants to produce CO2 – net effect, bio-solar power…

I am going to ignore the whole “need” for sequestration question for now & only put on my geologic / reservoir engineering hat to comment.
Here’s a link to the original article:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2464617/
The big problem here (technically, just for starters) is that this is completely unproven technology (chemical sequestration, in an actual field setting). In general, when chemical reactions occur in a reservoir setting , they almost always reduce permeability unless they are specifically designed to increase permeability (such as an acid frac in limestone, which dissolves the rock). This reaction is not designed to increase permeability – it is simply transforming one type of rock into another via the addition of CO2. Note that you are adding mass to the system & that mass has to go somewhere – so it is going to fill the pore space & reduce the permeability. My guess is that you would quickly reduce your perm with the creation of limestone to the point where you couldn’t inject any more CO2, rendering the concept & project useless. Basalts, in general, do not have well connected pore spaces. They have locally good permeability along joints (cooling surfaces) and fractures, but this permeability is in general quite ineffective at connecting up the bulk of the pore space. If you cant hook up your pore space, you have no place to put the extra mass (CO2) & you reduce your good permeability quickly. I would like to see a mass balance on their calculations. My initial reaction, even if permeability blocking isn’t a problem that there is not enough connected pore space that can be accessed to accommodate all the CO2 they propose putting into the ground.
Assuming the technology was proven (injection & chemical sequestration in basalt) , what might the costs be? Note that in the original paper, the proposal is to inject the CO2 as a liquid – it takes a whole lot of energy to liquify & pump that CO2 away. I would also like to see the energy requirements of these operations & how much CO2 that produces – that will reduce the net CO2 reductions, potentially significantly. What about the cost of drilling the 1000’s of wells & associated facilities needed to use the whole basin for sequestration? If they go offshore as proposed in the article, they can easily figure on a net $20-40 million per well – for drilling & facilities. For a 1000 wells, that would be 20-40 billion dollars. Not exactly cheap – and of course we still haven’t added in the operating expenses – energy, maintenance, personnel, etc to run such a scheme. I think if you add it all up, the costs per unit CO2 per btu of power generated would be astronomical, even if it were technically feasible.
On that note, I will leave it to others why we don’t even need sequestration to start with (I would start with talking about how miniscule this is in the over all carbon budget of the Earth, followed by how the evidence for CO2 based catastrophic warming is extremely poor, etc etc)
The idea of chemical sequestration is interesting academically, but it is hard to see this ever being done in a practical setting.

Gary P (18:58:25) :
Great, the real threat is a cold trend, short growing seasons, famine in the poorer countries and these guys want to bury plant food.
I beginning to understand how the last time the sun went passive and the crops failed, people began to burn witches. I have a couple scapegoats in mind. How are we going to find the wood for the fire under all this snow?
According to Monty Python witches are made of wood since like wood they burn. Since according to Python ducks float like wood then surely ducks burn if you dry them out, therefore all you need is a couple of ducks to use as kindling.
They will be about as useful as this study.

This is not about CO2. None of these people could care a whit about CO2. Since it is an invisible gas, the public can be bamboozled (trust us, folks, we are piping CO2 to protect the children) for as long as they want this caper to run.

I don’t believe our technology is currently adequate to safely sequester CO2 even if we wanted to. Years ago I was a roughneck on natural gas well rigs, including what they refer to as hydrogen sulfide wells. Those contain high percentages of H2S, and accidental releases were deadly to all life in the area.
I would think there would be significant risks associated with gathering quantities of CO2 on a scale that would make an impact, as well as with putting the CO2 back into ground and containing it there.
As earlier posters imply, I can’t see anyone initially agreeing to have the CO2 sequestration source in their backyard (NIMBY), although an accidental release may be less significant than a release at a nuclear power plant, which most of us have accepted as a tolerable risk.
A bit off topic, does anyone know why Cryosphere Today went to 2-year comparison chart for the Northern and Southern hemispheres as shown on their website today? Apologies if this has been posted elsewhere.

It’s simple, CO2 cannot act as a greenhouse, it’s effect is nearly exhausted as a heat retention augmenter, and it was much higher even as recently as the 1940s (440-550 ppm). Why is the direct chemical data ignored so religiously?

OT but Joe Romm is denigrating Joe the Bastardi over at his Climate Puke website. You couldn’t write this stuff (though it actually has been written), I think that it is time to redefine who the real “denialists” are.
I wish that little lisping balding pussy would allow some comments through other than the 50 buddy’s he has. But then that would be a real discussion, and you know he doesn’t want to be anything like WUWT!

Steve Keohane (19:33:21) :
It may be that there is a natural process that follows the above chemistry. I live on a basalt flow, near Basalt Mtn. in Colorado. I have very rich soil, filled with basalt from fist to boulder
Hawaii has the very same problem. A basaltic soil that will grow practically anything. Hell, if you throw a tomato down on the ground, you will have a tomato plant within the year. And they are warmer by about 20 degrees than the globe is. Does anyone think that they need a cooler climate?
If anyone is a true AGW believer, then I challenge you to head north for your holiday during the next winter.

Any state that sequesters CO2 shouldn’t get food shipped in from other states. It’s as simple as that. If they’re depleting the atmosphere of plant food by sequestering it in their stupid rock formations, let them figure out how to feed themselves. Greedy plant food sequesterers.

My fellow New Jerseyians have already just about banned all garbage disposal and garbage incinerators in the state. New York City closed the Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, to much cheering and applause. These pseudoenvironmentalists think they are saving the environment by trucking their refuse to PA, WV, and OH.
Try driving along Route 80 or the PA Turnpike at any time of the day or night.
You will see an endless stream of 22 ton refuse tractor trailers going back and forth from NJ and NYC to the landfills, 200 miles away.
I wonder what the carbon footprint of all that burned diesel fuel is?
I read one estimate that the garbage transfer consumes 10% of the area’s diesel fuel.
Madness…

Also in my country a number of craps have long been twittering on the carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), but that is no more a means of job creation ふby bureaucrats, for whom the most important target is drawing a huge amount of money from Ministry of Finance. The outcome of new projects is none of their concerns…………….

Visiting Mammoth Lakes in CA a few years ago, I observed and area of dying trees and signs posted warning tourists to stay clear of a very specific area where there was danger of asphyxiation from CO2 seepage. Caveat emptor….

This idea has a very lucrative benefit. In the distant future, there will be very little humor, as entropy will have removed the energy from humorous things. Archeologists will uncovered theses projects and humor will be infused with energy once again as a loud cry goes up:” [snip] were those idiots thinking? “

wherever u look, it’s money, money, money….
Climate Audit has mentioned Tim Profeta a couple of times, as he was copied in an email to ‘the team’ when he was in Joe Lieberman’s office dealing with AGW.http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=376&filename=1067194064.txt
amusingly, profeta founded an oil & gas exploration company called Captiva Resources Inc, which has Prof Stephen Schneider as a Director:http://www.spoke.com/info/c6SU5h1/CaptivaResourcesInc
and interestingly, Tim Profeta has a three-page profile here that is well worth reading:
Duke Magazine:Pragmatic Problem Solver
Volume 95, No.6, November-December 2009
Tim Profeta, comfortable among scholars and respected within Capitol culture, brings a sure hand to the delicate task of inserting good environmental research into the national legislative discourse
by Barry Yeoman
Tim Profeta M.E.M. ’97, J.D. ’97, director of Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions…
Duke had a joint program offering a law degree and master’s of environmental management; it seemed like a good match.
Profeta found the two degree programs “cross-fertilizing,” he says. “When my law-school classmates’ eyes were glazing over on the seventeenth acronym of environmental law, I was interested because I understood the economics and the science that underlay those laws.” After he graduated in 1997, he practiced law and clerked for a judge before accepting a position as the environmental counsel to Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut….
Before he leaves for a private dinner with U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu Hon. ’06, Profeta sits down with Maggie Fox, the new president of the Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit founded by former Vice President Al Gore. They chat in the lobby of Washington’s St. Regis Hotel, under Italian Renaissance chandeliers, about some of the impediments to climate legislation. One is the resistance of lawmakers from poorer districts. This week, Representative G.K. Butterfield, Democrat of North Carolina, has fretted aloud that cap-and-trade would raise the price of everything from gasoline to toys. “For a low-income family, it’s absolutely impossible for them to absorb the costs,” he told reporters.
Fox suggests that what’s needed are “state laboratories,” small-scale experiments focused on reducing carbon emissions without burdening the poor. “What you need to say to Butterfield is, ‘Let’s sign up your district today,’ ” she tells Profeta. “Let’s pick twenty-five districts, because there’s a big difference between a low-income district in North Carolina and one in Montana.”…
As he moves through Washington, talking with everyone from Congressional aides to Secretary Chu, Profeta remains nearly invisible to outsiders. He received just two mentions in major U.S. newspapers during the first nine months of 2009. Yet those who work with him say his imprint is ubiquitous. “I call Tim the marionette master,” says one Senate staffer. “He controls all the puppets.”…
Profeta acknowledges that the current bill is “rife with imperfections because of politics.” Ever the pragmatist, he doesn’t let these shortcomings slow him down. “I don’t really reflect,” he says. “I just keep riding the boat down the river.”
(Yeoman is a freelance journalist whose work appears in Audubon, AARP The Magazine, and O, The Oprah Magazine)http://www.dukemagazine.duke.edu/dukemag/issues/111209/solver1.html

The only way to put a stop to this nonsense is to elect people to government who will stop funding it.
In the meantime, we need some bumper stickers:
“CO2 IS GOOD FOR PLANTS, GOOD FOR THE EARTH, AND GOOD FOR YOU!”
/Mr Lynn

As has been said here many times and in many ways, history will be the judge. In the meantime, unfortunately for us all, despite common sense truth screaming in their faces, they are set to go through with this nonsense. This is not only the first wildcat scheme we will be hearing about and public money is about to be squandered. The only hope is that the time delay needed to implement these mindless actions will be longer than that needed to set all the coming investigations and legal actions in motion, but at present they have brainwashed the young public and demonised sceptics to such an extent, it will be an uphill struggle and the same triangular strife as we witnessed in Copenhagen.

If NAS scientists knew anything about CO2, they would know that it exists inside the Earth and has existed there for billions of years under very high pressure as a fluid inside the Earth’s mantle. It is also gaseous plant food in the natural cycle of plant/animal life.
The decay products of extinct Pu-244 and I-129 are in CO2 that is still trapped inside the Earth. They have been there since the Earth formed about 4.6 Gyr (4.6 x 10^9 years) ago.
These decay product on extinct elements were first observed in CO2 gas wells that are used to make Dry Ice in the state of New Mexico [“The xenon record of extinct radioactivities in the Earth,” Science 174 (1971) 1334-1336].
The same decay products of extinct elements were later observed in fluid inclusions of CO2 in an olivine xenothlith that was brought to the Earth surface in an Hawaiian volcano [ “Noble gases in an Hawaiian xenolith”, Nature 257, 778-780 (1975)].
What a crazy world where NAS fails to meet its responsibility to speak out on fraudulent CO2-induced global warming and then joins the charade by agreeing to publish methods to bury CO2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Will India and China also send us their CO2 to bury?
That’s my opinion,
Oliver K. Manuel

If anyone were really serious about carbon sequestration, we would stop recycling paper and cardboard and bury it all in landfills. Trees grow most rapidly when they’re young so it makes sense, in a Swiftian way, to make all your paper products from young trees, replant them and bury the paper products. A well constructed land fill stays dry enough once sealed that there’s not much methane. What there is could be captured.
Another possibility is to turn the wood into charcoal, collect the volatiles for fuel (that’s how methanol used to be made, it’s also known as wood alcohol) and other uses and bury the charcoal (or add it to soil ). I’m almost half serious here, although my tongue is definitely in the vicinity of my cheek.

The Man-Made Global warming Scam is all about stealing money from the sheeple.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is one of the major reasons for promoting the fraud of man-made global warming. Billions of tax payer dollars are now being spent to make a select few filthy rich from this useless technology. Senator John D Rockefeller is the major player behind this scam.
Rockefeller is a longtime champion of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. Earlier this year, he helped secure $3.4 billion for the Fossil Energy Research and Development programs, including CCS research, in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.http://rockefeller.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=317677&amp

In the UK there was a ‘Horizon’ program some years ago about the ‘black earth’ of South America. Normally soil there is very poor but the ‘black earth’ is possibly the most fertile soil on Earth. Analysis showed it contained up to 80% of charcoal or char.
Hundreds, possibly thousands, of years ago the Indians had added charcoal to their soil and made it permanently fertile. The charcoal appears to hold in the nutrients. The scientist on the program was doing plant tests by adding charcoal to soil and using less fertiliser but getting far better growth.
If it does promote plant growth then there is commercial reason to apply it on a global scale – obviously the Amazon, possibly the Steppes of Russia, the American wheat belt, everywhere! Also, if it promotes plant growth it will remove even more carbon from the atmosphere. If some of this extra growth is put back in to the soil as charcoal then it becomes a virtuous circle.
In fact if charcoal is beneficial then it may be better to convert organic waste to charcoal than compost it as composting produces methane.
It has the advantage that it can be done on any scale. I think the simplest recipe is one third each of charcoal, cow manure and earth.
Certainly this is the only rational way I know to remove carbon from the atmosphere as it could actually be beneficial.

I thought basalt was a rather low or non-porous rock? How can you pump a few kilotons of CO2 / day into a low porosity hole that then forms an expanded volume carbonate plug in any pores?
Just seems like a chemical researcher trying to play engineer and failing.
What would I do with a nice stream of CO2 from a coal plant? Especially with entrained H2O? I’d feed it into a nuclear powered Fischer Tropsch process and turn it into Diesel and Gasoline. Might need to add some trash to soak up the excess O2 and turn it into fuel too. You get a “two fer” out of it. (About 70% of the total energy in the resultant Diesel and Gasoline comes from the Nuke. The rest comes from the carbon rich trash.)
FWIW, I did a quick “thought experiment” that says that 1% of the earth surface planted with fast growth species of plants (poplars, cottonwood, eucalyptus, etc.) or about 1/5 to 1/10 of that as algae ponds will suck all the existing CO2 out of the air in just a generation or so (50 years) down to the level where plants are starving. You want a CO2 sponge? Think Green (no, not that green, REAL green, plants). “4 Billion Years of Evolution Can’t Be Wrong!” 😉
1 % of the earth surface of algae ponds can “do the deed” in 5 years.
Algae only needs about 1/10 of solar intensity for full growth, so this can be a 10 layer structure of pond with passive ‘light pipes’ spreading the light through it (an established technology). That makes it 1/10 % of the earth’s surface ( or about 500 km by 1000 km. Something that would easily fit in, oh, some desert space next to the sea – for the water). Feed in sewage, light, and air. Take out Algae. 5 years, CO2 scrubbed. “Ta Dah!”
But we probably don’t want to suck it ALL out 8-}
What to do with all those megatons of Algae? Well… I wouldn’t bury it…
Fish food and fertilizer come to mind, but some algae is up to 50% oil, that can be run in a Diesel engine… but you could also make a high protein ruminant food out of algae. And the carbohydrate part can be fermented… See where I’m going with this?
Vodka Martini, Beef Steak, Baked Potato w/ sour cream & butter, Salad, green beans, garlic bread / Texas Toast, Caviar and Ceviche appetizer, and a nice Green bioDiesel Monster Truck to get you to the party 😉
Now doesn’t that sound much better than gloom and doom?
It’s an interesting thing to ‘work out’. Plants WILL suck atmospheric CO2 down to levels that are in the hard roll-off of their ability to remove it from the air in very short order. That is most likely what happened as the holocene let plants grow more widely. The result was our modern extraordinarily low (and hostile to plants starvation level) of CO2. And given half a chance, plants will suck it all back out AGAIN into their exponential growth suppression range in just a few years. Why fight nature? Let the plants have it, they know what to do with it…http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/06/02/of-trees-volcanos-and-pond-scum/
Don’t believe it? Then you do the numbers.

I followed the link posted above to the article on the BBC re the deaths around the lakes in Africa. It says that scientists said the cause was CO2 coming from the lake bottom.
quote:
It was finally concluded that the lake’s lower levels had become saturated by carbon dioxide gas (CO2) due to gaseous springs which bubbled up from the extinct volcano beneath.
It is thought that recent high rainfall had displaced the CO2-rich water at the bottom, releasing a massive bubble of carbon dioxide gas from the lake in a natural phenomenon now referred to as “lake overturn”.
The heavy gas then sank to the ground and rolled in a cloud several tens of metres deep across the surrounding countryside.
Pipes have now been put in place in Lake Nyos and nearby Lake Monoun to siphon water from the lower layers up to the surface and allow the CO2 at the bottom of the lake to slowly bubble out, preventing a repeat of 1986 tragedy.
Is this really true or is it another scam to incriminate CO2?REPLY: [ Lake story is true. Don’t know abou the “fix”. -mod]

The Man-Made Global warming Scam is all about stealing money from the American people.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is one of the major reasons for promoting the fraud of man-made global warming. Billions of tax payer dollars are now being spent to make a select few filthy rich from this useless technology. Senator John D Rockefeller is the major player behind this scam.
“Rockefeller is a longtime champion of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies. Earlier this year, he helped secure $3.4 billion for the Fossil Energy Research and Development programs, including CCS research, in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”http://rockefeller.senate.gov/press/record.cfm?id=317677&amp

Anticlimactic (21:43:44),
Our former opposition leader (Malcolm Turnbull) proposed using buried charcoal ‘biochar’ as a carbon sink. It is reported to ha surface area of between 500 and 1500 sqM per gram, a figure that I find astonishing. It is reported here
It has a highly porous structure that provides a sanctuary for microflora and does not break down. Fireplace carbon is used in Archeology for carbon dating (good for 40kyrs).
Adding this to our soils not be a bad idea in Australia as we have a thin, friable soil structure.

I’m with Craig, surely now CO2 is legally a pollutant, you can’t just bury it underground? What next, anthrax to be dumped at sea? What if it effected the ground water???? Heaven forbid, what if it escaped and the earths plant life became exposed to CO2?????

xyzlatin
There was a recent program on a Sky channel [UK] about this. Apparently one mysterious incident killed a handful of people. The scientist investigating this suggested it was release of CO2 from the bottom of a volcanic lake caused by a rock fall. This idea was totally dismissed by other scientists. A few years later a similar incident killed 2000 people. Investigating scientists, after contacting the first scientist, looked for, and found, a recent rock fall.
The interesting part for me was that the CO2 rolled down the sides of the volcano like a blanket and suffocated the people to death. CO2 is a very heavy molecule and will try and fall to the lowest level. I am just intrigued as to whether this affects the distribution of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Tucci (18:28:40) :
Pumping CO2 into greenhouses. Methinks your tongue was in your cheek.
Most of that valuable crop fertilised by CO2 will, over the decades to centuries, break down to produce CO2 again. So this is a transient approach, not a permanent one.
For the same reason, I steer well clear of schemes that reward investors in tree plantations. Unless plantations are maintained at high yield in perpetuity, they are also transient solutions and only delay the inevitable production of CO2.
Show me a reward scheme and I’ll show you a scammer.

“For global warming protesters, the week was a total downer.
A University of Utah “scream-in” for the failed Copenhagen climate conference had to be iced, thanks to an errant December blizzard. Then faced with historic snowfalls in Europe, bicyclist Thaneite Khandekar cut short his global awareness trek. “There were times when my feet would be frozen,” a dejected Khandekar had to admit.
Meanwhile, newspapers in North America, Europe, and Asia warned readers of the deep freeze that lay ahead. In the United States, over 1,200 new records for cold and snow were set in a single week.”
Millions pray for global warming as cold spell grips the planethttp://www.renewamerica.com/columns/roberts/100107

I’m trying to find where I saw two papers purporting that it takes 50% of a generators power to sequester the carbon.
I may have seen these at John dalys site or the SPPI site of Monckton
Am at work at mo so this is best I can do for now

Jeff L (19:58:45) : “My guess is that you would quickly reduce your perm with the creation of limestone to the point where you couldn’t inject any more CO2, rendering the concept & project useless.”
Spoilsport!

Before we are even able to store the Coca Cola bubbles generated by our power plants underground, we will have to spend approx. 15-20% of the power generated by said power plant on capturing the stuff from the flue gases.
Basically that means burning 15-20%
more fossil fuels in order to create the same nett power output as without carbon capture.
I thought we were running out of fossil fuels and have to preserve them. This CCS is beyond stupid.

In the UK the fashionable idea for carbon dioxide storage is in the depleted North Sea Oil fields. (At least they might get some more oil out). They would have to lay new pipelines as they are talking about pumping at 150bar pressure – or 2,175psi. So it will get exciting if they get a leaky joint).
If they fill every little bit of the available capacity, based on the IPCC’s own ‘scenarios’ of temperature rise, they will avoid a steamy temperature rise of 0.003ºC.
There is only one sensible place to pump CO2. Round up the greenie fraudsters and pump the gas where the sun don’t shine.

Important Safety Tip: Avoid Pits!
This is something to especially take note of in any type of industrial building. As the story goes, you can have two guys going down into a pit, the lower one suddenly falls off the ladder. So the other guy goes right down after him to help. Later, someone comes by, sees two guys at the bottom of the pit, quickly races for the ladder to help them…
Invisible gases do build up. If you see someone collapsed in a pit, LEAVE THEM. If there is a gas buildup, good chance they are already dead. Go get professional help, people with the proper breathing apparatus. And I don’t care who is in trouble, holding your breath and going down there quick is not an option.
I can well believe those volcanic lake stories. Similar to them is well known to be a hazard in regular industry, as well as mining. Now I’m sure OSHA has a ton of regulations on the books for pits these days, with requirements for forced ventilation. Which works until the power goes out, or the unmonitored fan stops working… Ammonia is still in use as a refrigerant as well, and plants that use it (ice cream makers, cold storage plants, etc) have been known to leak it when the power goes out. Be careful!
This is something which makes me believe this particular carbon sequestering scheme will never be implemented. What assurances are there the CO2 will not migrate elsewhere? Are there mines around there? What about underground caves? Do they know with certainty where cavers may go on their explorations? When there are “special” ones only a few may know about? What happens when they go to one they’ve been to dozens of times and know the air is good in there, but suddenly it’s not… Yup, that’ll be an expensive lawsuit.

CO2 sequestration would be on par with attempting to build a perpetual motion machine. You haven’t really solved anything, you’ve just kicked the can down the road a bit. What goes in will eventually come out.

I think the AGW crowd will change it’s tune somewhere around June, July, and August this year. That’s when they will notice food shortage in the US. The Department of Agriculture says we have enough supply to last us till August this year. That’s two months short. And you know what the kicker is? We have no supplies in reserve. But that’s not the best part. The best part is, food prices will probably double and triple by then. That’s when you will see the AGW crowd change it’s tune. Don’t ask me where I got this.

As a South African, it was interesting to observe that the Copenhagen agreement/non-agreement was finally hammered out between the States, China and South Africa – interesting because we (South Africa) were boxing way, way above our weight division. So why were we included? Here is my theory – as we all know South Africa already has some pretty deep and extensive holes dug, getting all that gold out, so it’s a perfect place to pump all that horrible CO2 into. The tankers offload the oil in the States, Europe etc; fill up with CO2 and on the way back to the gulf, stop over on the SA east coast, pump it out and up to the Reef where its stored a couple of km underground. Everybody wins, the tankers have a load both ways, the eco-“worriers” in the States and Europe are happy the stuff isn’t in their backyard, the gold miners here get paid both ways – gold out – CO2 in, it’s beautiful. Naturally, CO2 now becomes a commodity, to be traded like any other. Of course the “consumer” will have to pay for all of this, but hey nothings free – right. How prophetic of Pink Floyd – “Money – it’s a gas”.

CO2? Just pump the stuff into the air. There’s more than enough room for it there and it’s not doing any harm whatsoever. In fact, it’s doing a lot of good.
Why is it that the very people who are screaming about us harming the environment by our actions are the very same people who want to deliberately ‘geo-engineer’ ‘solutions’ to non-existent problems?
I agree with Dave (01:35:47): It is utter lunacy.

Perhaps the best way to deal with excess co2 in the atmosphere is to go to the coldest spot on earth and use the already cold temps to help a refrigeration system that could scrub co2. Then incase it in ice to keep it from sublimating during summer. I’m kidding of course… I think we will all be driving hydrogen cars long before we have a serious problem from a trace gas like co2.

@ Anticlimactic (21:43:54)
Re your comment: “Certainly this is the only rational way I know to remove carbon from the atmosphere as it could actually be beneficial.”
No. There is NO “rational” way of removing carbon from the atmosphere. The whole premise is entirely IRrational. There are no benefits to doing this (unless you believe preventing an insignificant amount of warming is “beneficial”).

What is it with these gurkbrains that they can only come up with useless ideas (sic)? There must be something in their mindset (sic) that prevents them from realising that if we all get richer, they also get richer. Maybe it’s a form of psychopathy (see Dr. Robert Hare).

Has anyone bothered to work out how much carbon that everybody could sequester in a year, compared with the 700,000,000,000 tonnes of CO2 that goes into the atmosphere each year? And how much will it cost per tonne?

Sequestration of CO2 in rocks! Why didn’t Mother Nature think of that? Or did she?
We’ve GOT to do something soon: what with warm air transferring heat to the oceans killing the coral reefs- all the sponges will die and then they won’t be able to soak up water anymore so then the oceans will rise and we’ll all be drowned in our beds! 😉

OT. Looking at the sea-ice monitor there seems to be a lot more ice in the Denmark Strait at the moment than in recent years. When was the last time there was an ice connection between Greenland and Iceland so that those cuddly polar bears could invade?

Keith Minto
Off topic, I remember talking to some medical students who brewed their own hooch and decided to use charcoal to filter out the impurities – it also filtered out the alcohol!!
—-
Reply: Well, sure. Have you ever heard the word “inTOXICated”?

Several people have mentioned my points, but I’ll re-emphasise them.
Basalts (and related extrusive rocks) are generally very low porosity and extremely low permeability unless highly fractured. Nobody is going to stuff a lot of anything into your average basalt. As to chemical reactions, those don’t exacly happen overnight, either. These fools might want to hire somebody who has actually worked gas fields in extrusive rocks.

Saw this point made elsewhere:
“PS . I’m a skeptic myself. I can`t believe CO2 is a significant cause for GW. Also, I hate when people label CO2 as “pollution”. In that case so is water – sorry I meant di-hydrogen monoxide.) ”
I wonder if the EPA has seriously considered H2O as a toxic substance it can regulate. I don’t have the statistics handy, but I’m sure drowning in H2O causes more deaths in the US every year than drowning in CO2.

Carbon sequestering is already happening–trees are growing 27% faster now with the higher CO2 content of the atmosphere; as the CO2 level increases, that growth rate will simply increase since plants do their best between 1,000 and 2,000 ppm (it has to be at least 150 ppm or plants stop uptake–that’s right; they die). Currently the CO2 content of the atmosphere is about 388 ppm and I’ve read where we could burn all our fossil fuels and it would’nt rise above ~600 ppm, meaning the plants will never be perfectly happy.
Responding to Mike C’s comment “These fools might want to hire somebody who has actually worked gas fields in extrusive rocks.”: You’re absolutely right, but do you really expect any of these bozos to talk to anybody with experience or logic? That’s the beauty of what they’re doing. Unaccountability + deep pockets + insanity = total waste of money.

Luke (19:11:13) :Ahh!!!!! CO2 leaking into the air…o wait it’s already there
As is radon, peacefully percolating upward from all the granite underlying the NY/NJ area. I’m patiently awaiting the Environmental Impact Statement, just so I can ask how much additional radon will be released into the air around NYC — then I’ll make popcorn while I watch the greenies’ hair catch fire…

They could save themselves a lot of time and trouble, not to mention environmental risk, as well as actually produce power or steam heat by simply taking the $multi-millions they would have spent on this CCS insanity and burning it, possibly even in a
plasma arc furnace. Yes, burning money can be Green.

Watch out for East Coast Earthquakes!
We know that pumping water into the ground can trigger earthquakes. Will CO2 have the same effect? Who will assume the liability of carbon dioxide induced earthquakes?
If the government promises business they are protected, I wouldn’t believe them. Look what happened to the TelComs that worked with the Bush Administration after 9/11. A new party in Washington brought out the knives and political arm twisting.
Any company that pumps massive amounts of CO2 into the ground is crazy.

I never understood people’s thinking. They are eco-idiots of the truest form. “People are ruining the environment based. So, to save the environment, we are going to ruin the environment.”
The one lesson I learned in life is people are idiots. Every single human being is an idiot, even me. The trick is to be less of an idiot than the rest. To be less of an idiot than the herd, you just have to spend some time thinking rationally instead of emotionally. When you listen to your heart, you are listening to an idiot. So you have to stop and think. Unfortunately, thinking is something that is trying to be suppressed. In college, I had a history professor ask “why do you think this civilization did this?” and similar questions. The students hated him. All their life, they were force fed. They were told by the radio what music was good. They were told what was in style by the TV. They were lectured to in school. And so on. To now actually think … blasphemy! And so now we have many people without an original opinion. All their ideas stem from what they were told to believe. And that way of thinking has carried over to science. So sad.

As I understand it, CO2 is VERY toxic if you concentrate it and it is heavier than air. So here is an idea by environuts to take emmissions that pose no real threat in their present form, concentrate and fill caverns with a deadly atmosphere of poison and then if there any sort of crack or earth shift or the Earth Burps, a huge cloud will escape and if it’s in a natural low area, perhaps kill any animals or people who happen to be there. The call this environmental protection???
I believe similar things have in Yellowstone, where some buffalo have been found dead from Sulfar poisoning when they were huddling around geysers for heat – which they do – and a massive eruption upped the toxicity.
These guys, these Champions of the Earth, they want to set this up on the chessboard??? Under New Jersey? It would be dead buffalos, and it won’t be cheap when the lawsuits start…

Why not put some of this “excess” CO2 to good use. Now that cold winters are a thing of the past then it’s plainly absurd to waste valuable resources by fitting new houses with heating. Thanks to the science department of the BBC the answer is simple. Coke bottles filled with CO2, glued to roofs, will give us all the heating we want!
Problem sorted.
As for pumping the evil gas into Moma Gaias intestines, well that’s just Plane Stupid.
It’s bad enough that the temperature just under our feet is millions of degrees without tipping it into the quad zillions!

An insanely expensive idea for a non-existent problem.
The money could be spent solving real environmental problems.
What a scam.
Slightly off topic, but still a great example of government squandering of capital is in Houston.
The past mayor organized a great deal of money to build a tiny park in downtown Houston, called ‘Discovery Green’.
It is almost a theme park more than a park. Movies, concerts, plays, ice skating (!), etc. etc. etc.
The price tag? $125 million.
The problems?
1) it is very difficult to get to. It is in the middle of downtown. It is not even the extremely limited train line Houston has (That almost no one rides)
2) It is tiny. It is only a few acres
3) and most importantly, the $125 million spent on Discovery Green cannot be spent to mitigate a real problem Houston has – too few green spaces.
$125 million could have bought significant amounts of land, taken that land out of commercial or residential use, and turned it into green space that people oculd actually discover.
Instead, we have a venue, managed by a lucrative *50 year* contract given to insiders, for a space that in effect offers entertainment for the well to do who live in downtown, or those who can easily drive in to downtown and pay for parking.http://www.discoverygreen.com/management/
Capital that could have significantly improved the environment of Houston, improved the park and green space access to regular Houstonians, was instead spent on a tiny piece of prime commercial real estate that can in reality serve almost no one.
These same people are backing cap-n-trade, tax subsidized windmills, CO2 regulation, etc. etc.
And our now ex-Mayor, who brags about this project, and the other millions he wasted on pointless solar energy demonstrations, wants to bring his brand of leadership to the Senate.
I would suggest that the boon doggle of geo-CO2 sequestration is simply a huge scale example of what the City of Houston has done with its Discovery Green:
Create a new way to do very little for very few with a huge price to everyone.

Our ‘rulers’ are supposed to be cleverer that us mere mortals! They are complete idiots, money grabbing idiots, lying idiots and most importantly to say, self-serving idiots.
I thought this crap about co2 was just about finished? It seems that vested interests are still trying to get government money on the back of that evil poison co2.
I need to lie down….

jaymam (02:59:27)
Total human CO2 emissions 5.5 GT C per year- 8.6 GT.
The atmosphere contains 780 Gt C; the surface ocean contains 1,000 Gt C; vegetation, soils, and detritus around 2,000 Gt C; and the intermediate and deep oceans contain 38,000 Gt C, as CO2 or CO2 hydration products. Each year, the surface ocean and atmosphere exchange an estimated 90 Gt C; vegetation and the atmosphere, 100 Gt C; marine biota and the surface ocean, 50 Gt C; and the surface ocean and the intermediate and deep oceans, 40 Gt C. We don’t know how much anthropogenic c is in the atmosphere. Its probably no more than 3% as co2 exchanges a lot and these sums of exchange mean regulation -not accumulation.. In truth, we don’t know all the natural sources of co2 such as the sum total of earth crust seam outlets, geysers, fumaroles underwater volcanoes etc

“Wade (05:18:24) :
[…]
The one lesson I learned in life is people are idiots.”
Yes, and the important thing is to assess the amount of idiocy right. According to Sturgeon it’s about 90 to 95 percent of the population. In all these Carbon sequestering projects it is seldom mentioned that the product they want to pump into some hole is at the moment a valuable industry gas.
You can buy it for 6 EUR a kg. So i guess the price comes down a little when you buy in bulk, say 3000 EUR a ton. They wouldn’t even have to install filters at powerplant, they can just buy all the CO2 they want to sequester on the free market at a price of 3000 EUR or 4400 USD per metric ton.
The emissions permit in the EU’s Cap and trade program costs about 10EUR ATM. So at the moment it’s 300 times cheaper to just pump it into the air.
This discrepancy has to be eliminated by better technology or subsidies to make the thing viable.

Here’s a great way to make toast.
Apparatus:
1x slice of bread
1 x long metal fork
1 x 2 litre (minimum)bottle of the soft drink of your choice
1 x cylinder of CO2 (optional)
Instructions:
Empty drinks bottle.
Make sure that bottle contains at least 350 ppm of CO2. This shouldn’t be a problem unless you’re in the vicinity of evil, pollutant hungry plants. Use gas bottle if necessary.
Screw top on tightly.
Place bread on toasting fork and hold it 6-12 inches from bottle.
Stop and turn bread when done to your liking.
Theory. See the Second Law of Toasto-Dynamics

I have to question the validity of the assumption of adequate pore space available in igneous formations. True, there are always porous layers involved in the mix, but igneous rock is notoriously chaotic in its structure. It’s hard enough to delineate storage capacity on-shore where (fairly expensive) test bore holes can be drilled. Offshore, however, the cost rises exponentially (as does the uncertainty involved in formation extents). This just sounds like an academic pipe dream to me. I should know. As a geologist, I’ve seen more than my fair share of projects set up to soak up funding which have almost absolutely no “real world” value.
While I was in graduate school, I subcontracted work for the U.S. Dept. of Energy concerning carbon sequestration in unminable coal seams (so I have at least a fairly good grasp of the jist of this article). The key with sequestration in coal is that the coal will preferentially bond with carbon dioxide over methane (thereby providing a potentially useful, and lucrative, by-product of the sequestration). In this setting, the flushed methane can be captured and put to use to offset the extreme costs involved in sequestration. The downside, of course, is that it only takes one significant fracture to unleash a nightmarish amount of high-pressured CO2 (which is deadly in such high concentrations) into the surrounding environment.
Sorry to be long-winded, but I just can’t see this going anywhere beyond the usual frittering-away of grant money.

Apart of the whole CO2 issue being simply a stupid waste of money, created by those who gain advantages out of it, the CO2 storage is a tricky thing in itself, as sequestration is quite complicated and energy intensive, today (hopefully I am wrong) noone has a technique at hand to avoid CO2 escaping in neighboring areas underground. CO2 is proven to be poison, not for the climate, not for the temperatures on this planet, but for humans who live in a sink like valleys, or mine workers etc.
CO2 as a gas is, if ever escaping the reservoirs and coming back up, for its weight replacing the normal air in a valley, for this effect known to be a silent killer. Has a long history in mining (for example german salt mining), where geologic events pressed CO2 in certain layers of the mine.
Better to see it as an enormous waste of money, better to see it as big governments play the public, but this is crazy, as long it is not 100% safe.

As a student in geology, the classes I had on microscopy dealt extensively with examination of igneous and metamorphic rocks and generally they are not porous. Fluids don’t flow through them and there is little pore space in which to store gasses or fluids. They are also very impermeable.
If you want a good every-day example of this, study how successful water well drilling is in granite (igneous), or shist and slate (both metamorphic). Well drillers hate these types of formations because they hold precious little water and the wells they drill demonstrate precious little recharge. Their only hope is to encounter some sort of structural boundary, such as a brecciated fault zone along which water can accumulate and flow.
Where I live on the Snake River Plain in Idaho, our water wells are very productive even though they’re drilled in basalt. Well, to be more precise, the wells go through layer after layer of basalt/sediment (sand, gravel, etc.)/ basalt again, for thousands of feet. And because basalt is rather porous since it is an extrusive volcanic rock (formed on the surface) and upon cooling generally forms columns (hence “columnar basalt”), it has significant pore space and permeability. But what is considered a benefit is also a drawback.
Consider the Teton Dam failure, which was caused primarily because the grouting of the large joints in the rock on the north side of the reservoir was not completed due to lack of funds. Once full, plenty of reservoir water seeped into that side of the canyon, traveled downstream toward the dam through joints and fractures, saturated some of the dam material enough to cause partial failure, and the water in the reservoir washed out the rest. 11 lives were lost.
Can you imagine pumping CO2 into such a formation? How would you keep it there? Targeting porous, permeable formations is fine if you can guarantee containment, but one big leak or belch and you’re looking at $billions or $trillions in lawsuits. Who will underwrite these ventures?
Find a porous, permeable stratigraphic unit burried by impermeable rock units above it and that’s a better configuration, but all it would take is an earthquake to fracture the overlying “lid”, release all that gas, and have a disaster on our hands. And there are other ways of puncturing the “lid” too, such as somebody drilling an oil, gas, or water well through it. You’d end up with a gusher not of black oil, but of CO2 gas.
If they won’t let us store radioactive waste underground, why should we consider storing something that is potentially as deadly?
Ah, of course… the same people that are bringing you polar bears falling from the sky and Cap and Trade schemes.
Those people… (They figure as long as they can make things more expensive, everything will right itself. Fat chance.)
When logic is lost regarding the impact that CO2 has on the environment in the first place, it can’t be expected to show up later on dealing with any other aspects of it either.

Charles Higley (20:08:24) :
It’s simple, CO2 cannot act as a greenhouse, it’s effect is nearly exhausted as a heat retention augmenter, and it was much higher even as recently as the 1940s (440-550 ppm). Why is the direct chemical data ignored so religiously?

That was a post deleted from Climate Progress. He posted a rant about record CO2 and someone posted that it was higher in 1942 It had to be deleted. Over dose of facts and truth.
Hide the decline of CO2.

All this after you agree:
1.Believing in Al Gore´s Green Religion.
2.Accept being taxed by Cap&Trade.
3.Buying carbon shares to pay for your carbon sins.
4.Declaring under oath that individual freedom it is also a sin.
5.Not to drink anymore those sinful carbonated beverages.
6.Buy and drink, everyday, uncarbonated, and “soma” (*) formulated, “Kool-Aid”
(*)Eternal happiness additive provided by government
7.To obey all dictates and mandates issued by your holy and eternal progressive government.

“I get it, these areas get billons for the storage of CO2”
No. My relatives have an underground natural gas storage field. It is many miles across. Maybe 40 square miles reaching under neighbors land. The gas companies paid damage settlements to lay pipe and road space. They do not get rich from the energy.
The land has a handfull of gas monitoring wells also. There is not much leakage and some of that is lateral and not vertical. It leaks along the lines of the rock.
In the Anadarko basin, there are thousands of gas wells and a handfull of cross country pipelines. The storage fields retain gas and it is brought into the system during peak demands.
Leaking is not a problem.
It would cost millions to build CO2 pumping station and system. (plus millions for injection wells)
It would cost a lot of money and energy to run high pressure pumps.
No one mentions this. There have been experiments where CO2 was injection into irrigation water and it also improved crop growth.
We are dealing with fear and non agriculture minds. They don’t know it but we can scare them regarding the 70% nitrogen that is in our atmosphere. It can kill(divers bends)
It is poison. Put 100% nitrogen on plants and they “burn” up.

Sorry, this is a bookmark, does anyone have ideas on how to do it without commenting (I sometimes send myself an email with the link and a bit copied from the last comment but it gets cumbersome)?
Thanks for getting more info on my great plan to save the planet by increasing tomato plant yields and giving the homeless a warm place to sleep at night, an idea that seems eminently more sensible than what the experts are all up to

Dave D (05:31:03) :
As I understand it, CO2 is VERY toxic if you concentrate it and it is heavier than air. So here is an idea by environuts to take emmissions that pose no real threat in their present form, concentrate and fill caverns with a deadly atmosphere of poison and then if there any sort of crack or earth shift or the Earth Burps, a huge cloud will escape and if it’s in a natural low area, perhaps kill any animals or people who happen to be there. The call this environmental protection???

Minor correction, CO2 is not a “poison” it is an asphyxiant, it is heavier than air, and pools in low spots. In very high concentrations it also upsets the respiratory regulation system due to changes in partial pressure of CO2 in the blood.
By very high levels I mean well in excess of normal atmospheric concentrations.
From CO2 MSDS sheets we find guide lines as follows:
Source: http://www.airgas.com/documents/pdf/001013.pdfACGIH TLV (United States, 1/2008).
STEL: 54000 mg/m³ 15 minute(s).
STEL: 30000 ppm 15 minute(s).
TWA: 9000 mg/m³ 8 hour(s).
TWA: 5000 ppm 8 hour(s).NIOSH REL (United States, 6/2008).
STEL: 54000 mg/m³ 15 minute(s).
STEL: 30000 ppm 15 minute(s).
TWA: 9000 mg/m³ 10 hour(s).
TWA: 5000 ppm 10 hour(s).OSHA PEL (United States, 11/2006).
TWA: 9000 mg/m³ 8 hour(s).
TWA: 5000 ppm 8 hour(s).OSHA PEL 1989 (United States, 3/1989).
STEL: 54000 mg/m³ 15 minute(s).
STEL: 30000 ppm 15 minute(s).
TWA: 18000 mg/m³ 8 hour(s).
TWA: 10000 ppm 8 hour(s).
In western Colorado they have some CO2 wells that the withdraw CO2 from geological formations, and sell it as a commercial gas. They have to have emergency plans in place in case there is a major pipe line rupture in the system as it could release enough CO2 in a short period of time to cause asphyxiation in low lying areas. The same would apply to any injection system, you would need, monitoring systems (wind direction and speed, along with local CO2 concentrations) along with evacuation plans, and warning systems near the sequestration plants.
Larry

Thanks, Anthony, for your frequent gift of “boiling blood” in the top-of-the-morning read. Yes, I truly believe that the pseudo-scientists, the pseudo-engineers, the university departments (or government-funded “special projects” outside of normal academic control), the politicians in power pushing (corrupt) coffer-filling fantasies, the political parties engaged in support for such projects — all are monstrous; all are trying to become immortal through power and greed.
Well, we all know what happened to Icarus. When Minos (Pachuri, Gore, Rockefeller, Soros, backers of BHO, global financiers, etc., Democrats, Republicans) wanted to retain his kingdom and power forever, he planned to permanenty imprison his son (descendants). He hired a learned person/scientist/engineer to trap that son forever (AGW scam). Unfortunately, once the plan worked, Minos also imprisoned the learned person and his son (descendants) — trapped forever (“the ice is melting-we’re burning up science”). But learned person/pseudo-scientist/pseodo-engineer invented a way to escape. Through his amazing mind he developed a way to safety (stop productivity/sequester CO2) for himself and his descendants. Unfortunately, the son (descendants) knew no science and, therefore, improperly used that invention and fell into the sea to his doom.
The fun part is that the myth includes labyrinth Earth (“how many unknowns/the science is not settled”), the Sun (“this has not happened before in 100 years!”), and the Oceans/Sea (“the heat is in the ocean pipeline…somewhere”).
Michael (01:01:47) warns us that if the harvests go bad for weather reasons this year, we only have enough supply to last until August 2010 — the U.S. helps to feed the world. (I remember having difficulty getting pumpkin last year because so many of the fields had to be plowed under — rot from unseasonable rains, I think.) These are “human-controlled” plants. With a twist on E.M. Smith (21:54:32), we also might want to worry about the non-human-controlled plants. “Plants WILL suck atmospheric CO2 down to….our modern extraordinarily low level of CO2.” Trying to control CO2 might be exactly the opposite path to take to keep ourselves/Earth healthy and warm enough. Oh, well, so much for our descendants.
I want accountability for the monsters — fines (put the damn money back), and jail time.

Galen Haugh (07:46:18) : I used to live in Idaho , and still have a second home there and have alwayh been curious about the aquifer under the Snake River Plain . What constitutes the impermeable layer beneath the columnal basalt that retains the water and allows it to flow into the Snake around Hagerman ? I understand what makes the Little and Big Lost Rivers , along with Birch Creek , sink , But why doesn’t the Little Wood ? Is it a difference in the basalt flows in that area ? Age ? These are probably simplistic questions , but I have wondered about this for many years .

Never thought the day would come where some people would actually buy into “selling air for profit” …
Orwellian novels (more like predictions) couldn’t have predicted this… or did they :).
Creating ‘money’ out of thin air was the FEDS job, now, it seems, they’ve branched out.
AGW is a precursor to Agenda 21, and is SELLING AIR

I once had a 32 lb. CO2 fire extinguisher bottle go off on me while I was sitting in the driver’s compartment of an M60A1 tank. My fellow mechanics where standing outside laughing at me as I tried to crawl through the 6 inch gap between the hatch and the turret. Trust me, you can inhale CO2 all you want, but it is distinctly unsatisfying.
Don’t try this at home.

Tucci (18:28:40) :“Why bother?
If carbon dioxide can be captured at all, why pump it underground when it can be piped into greenhouses to be taken up by photosynthetic plants, simultaneously sequestering this “toxic” gas and producing yields of botanical products?
I suggest Cannabis sativa grown densely in such greenhouses…”
That is the best idea I have ever heard from this whole idiotic mess. Of Course the big ten food companies would squash it unless you can sell it to them.

E.M.Smith (21:54:32) :“….1 % of the earth surface of algae ponds can “do the deed” in 5 years.
Algae only needs about 1/10 of solar intensity for full growth, so this can be a 10 layer structure of pond with passive ‘light pipes’ spreading the light through it (an established technology). That makes it 1/10 % of the earth’s surface ( or about 500 km by 1000 km. Something that would easily fit in, oh, some desert space next to the sea – for the water). Feed in sewage, light, and air. Take out Algae. 5 years, CO2 scrubbed. “Ta Dah!”
But we probably don’t want to suck it ALL out 8-}
What to do with all those megatons of Algae? Well… I wouldn’t bury it…
Fish food and fertilizer come to mind, but some algae is up to 50% oil, that can be run in a Diesel engine… but you could also make a high protein ruminant food out of algae. And the carbohydrate part can be fermented… See where I’m going with this?…”
Chief, I have 100 ac sitting on a big river in NC, it even has a big pond/swamp. Want to go into business with me sequestering CO2 or making money off grants???
If you can’t beat them join them at the public trough…

Do they know with certainty where cavers may go on their explorations? When there are “special” ones only a few may know about? What happens when they go to one they’ve been to dozens of times and know the air is good in there, but suddenly it’s not… Yup, that’ll be an expensive lawsuit.
REPLY:
They cave all up and down the east coast, and no we do NOT tell others where we cave because we do not want the cave trashed. However most caves are in limestone or marble and this is talking basalt.
My suggestion based on what I read here is using basalt sand/gravel as “scrubbers” and then using the exhausted basalt to grow food.

Galen Haugh (04:00:07) :Saw this point made elsewhere:
“PS . I’m a skeptic myself. I can`t believe CO2 is a significant cause for GW. Also, I hate when people label CO2 as “pollution”. In that case so is water – sorry I meant di-hydrogen monoxide.) ”
Just for fun, try http://dhmo.org
———
Wade (05:18:24) :I never understood people’s thinking. They are eco-idiots of the truest form. “People are ruining the environment based. So, to save the environment, we are going to ruin the environment.”
The one lesson I learned in life is people are idiots. Every single human being is an idiot, even me. The trick is to be less of an idiot than the rest. To be less of an idiot than the herd, you just have to spend some time thinking rationally instead of emotionally. When you listen to your heart, you are listening to an idiot. So you have to stop and think. Unfortunately, thinking is something that is trying to be suppressed.
Alfred North Whitehead is said to have started his course of philosophy lectures by saying:
Human beings will go to almost any lengths to avoid having to think.

Question: Has an Emergy Analysis been performed on this scheme to see how much CO2 would be produced to build and operate the sequestration infrastructure compared to how much CO2 would being stored?
Answer: No, because the value is less than unity and, thus, a total waste of resources.

I haven’t read through all the comments, but this does actually have the potential to be dangerous. Limnic eruptions have suffocated many people with CO2 – if this stuff was concentrated and then released all of the sudden then it could easily kill thousands.

Charles S. Opalek, PE (13:54:14) :
Question: Has an Emergy Analysis been performed on this scheme to see how much CO2 would be produced to build and operate the sequestration infrastructure compared to how much CO2 would being stored?
Answer: No, because the value is less than unity and, thus, a total waste of resources.

“Gail Combs (11:26:40) :
[…]
Chief, I have 100 ac sitting on a big river in NC, it even has a big pond/swamp. Want to go into business with me sequestering CO2 or making money off grants???
If you can’t beat them join them at the public trough…”
Nice idea. I don’t know who it was, the japanese, the dutch, beats me, are trying to grow algae in tubes. The problem for now is that the algae grow so fast that they tend to clog up the mechanical systems.
So if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life fishing out algae by hand, better wait until the technology is sufficiently developed or develop it yourself. To my knowledge, it’s not economically viable for now.

@Gail Combs (12:26:21) :
Yup, I knew a guy who did that, and heard of other cavers as well. I also took note of the rule, “You take out what you bring in.” And that means everything. They are very protective of their caves.
However, I also noted a lot of them are not carrying air quality monitors. Hey, you know there’s a straight path to the surface, no blockages, so the air has to be good, right? There can be some nasty surprises down there. And if that breeze you are feeling is actually from someone pumping in pressurized CO2?
It’s nice to know about the formations, thanks for the info. However, that is still no guarantee someone is not going to get killed by this scheme.

@Richard M (08:54:15) :
Thanks for the info. I first heard of it on a PBS show, think it was Scientific America Frontiers. At that point there was a university prototype unit, and they were figuring out what the algae would be good for.
If anything, it seems a more efficient way to harness sunlight than photovoltaic systems, will tolerate dim sunlight better. It isn’t a direct generator of electricity, but still useful. And especially coming from a power plant, the heat from the exhaust can be regulated to keep the algae going in winter, at least offhand it seems that could be done. I haven’t read your links yet, but I will.

While I was in graduate school, I subcontracted work for the U.S. Dept. of Energy concerning carbon sequestration in unminable coal seams (so I have at least a fairly good grasp of the jist of this article).

How about pumping that CO2 down into those unquenchable coal-seam fires? That ought to be cheaper and do some good. If it’s a no-go here, maybe China would try it.

All enginering solutions represent compromises among competing factors. CO2 injected into porous rock will permit the formation of carbonic acid which may lead to the leaching of toxins, such as heavy metals, into the public water supply. Will more people be saved from GW, or more poisoned by the “cure?”http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/short/303/1/67?home

CO2 is not solely responsible for the observed increase in temperature readings. More importantly though, the increase is a localised phenomenon, one which will rapidly decrease if all emissions were stopped. But no city in the world is willing or able to participate in such an experiment. So in the meantime we’ll all be taxed stupid because of the erroneous belief that CO2 is our greatest threat.
Anyone who studies CO2 in this manner is simply behaving as any well-conditioned AGWist monkey is supposed to.
As an aside, CO2 is only one emission from the burning of hydrocarbons – water is the other main emission. Given that the IPCC says that water vapour is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, why don’t we hear anything about it? Why is there no Hydrogen Trading Scheme or Hydrogen Sequestration?

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